I picked up this book not realizing it was the final in a trilogy. Perhaps if I had read the previous two books, I would have enjoyed "Them of Us" more. The story is interesting and I love a good post-apocalyptic read, but I just couldn't get into the characters or the style of dialogue. ( )

Them of Us read much like Dog Blood, slow and steady till the end. If you read the first two books in the Hater series it's worth finishing up the seriew with Them or Us, otherwise there is not much to see here. ( )

I only read half of this book and I read this series completely out of order, starting with "Dog Blood" then went back and read "Hater" then tried to conclude with "Them or Us". I don't know what my opinion would have been if I had just read the books in order. I thought "Dog Blood" was excellent but did not think much of "Hater". "Them or Us" focused on a lot of suffering. Despite it being a few years since reading I can still remember in detail the images and the greasy taste of the scenes that the words made in my head. I don't recall why I did not finish. I was in college at the time and maybe just didn't find the time and had to return it. I wouldn't say it was bad at all though. If it had been as good as "Dog Blood" I would have definitely finished this book though.

The first book depicted the initial change and battles among people when whatever it was caused the change in the haters’ brains to make them aggressive and violent. I liked the idea of the haters. Something in their brain told them that people who were not "haters" were an immediate threat to their existence so they had to be eliminated. I hated the character and was uninterested in the introduction to this new awful world.
The second book picked up shortly after when it was well established that haters and nonhaters where at war with each other. Danny decides to find his daughter. She is 5 years old. I found this plot to be incredibly interesting and seeing the "hater" children as well. Also interesting- Danny can "resist" the hate.
After an extended amount of time after “Dog Blood” "Them or us" takes place. I don't even recall any nonhaters in the book. It seemed like they were now dealing with the world they had destroyed with their hate. Danny is part of some small camp and is on the bottom or near bottom of the pecking order- hence his suffering. After the haters became more isolated (or had they killed most of the nonhaters by now?) they seemed to all become normal, terrible, people again.

I will not give this book a star rating since I did not complete it.

THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE WHOLE TRILOGY NOT JUST THIS BOOK.
Originally published on the Clermont County Public Library Off the Shelf blog (http://www.clermontlibrary.org/wp/2012/01/david-moodys-hater-trilogy/)
Originally, self-published on the internet with great success, the Hater series is a look at one man’s plight through the destruction of human society. The series begins with Hater in which Danny McCoyne is stuck in a dead end bureaucratic job that does not pay enough to support his partner and three children. One day people start attacking other people for no apparent reason. The media terms these people “Haters”. This story follows Danny as his world goes mad and the lack of the government response to the “Haters”. This is a well written book built on suspense more than action. In the second book, Dog Blood the two halves of society, the “Haters” and “Unchanged” are now at war, which can only end when one set is extinct. This book is gory and packed full of action just the way apocalyptic books should be. Them or Us, the conclusion, is set a year after the “Hater” attacks began and several months after the “Unchanged” dropped nuclear weapons on every major city in Great Britain. This book is your typically post-nuclear war with a dash of “Hater” on “Unchanged” battles. There are the battles over food and power. The author does not flinch away from the violence people will commit over things like cooked dog meat when they haven’t eaten in days. The third feels a little disconnected from the first two which ultimately left me a little disappointed with the finale. Overall, I loved the series; it was definitely a great new twist on the apocalyptic “zombie” fiction. I now cannot wait to see the movie based on this series being made into a movie by the director Guillermo del Toro. ( )

I can't honestly say I was expecting a happy ending to this post-apocalyptic zombie trilogy, but some kind of resolution would have been nice. ( )